Join the march!
There is a march! A demonstration, as they say in England, or a manifestation in French. What is it? It is to put our bodies in space where they are not intended to be as a claim. It had recently seemed almost like a relic of past time, something that people used to do long ago.
Since the powerful demonstrations in Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt and elsewhere sparked the Arab Spring of 2011, leading to the downfall of long-term dictatorships in Egypt and Tunisia, the march seems like a crucial event once more. It is movement through space, a reclamation of space and a place where people and ideas meet. It allows us to be other than the objects of global capital.
Since the powerful demonstrations in Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt and elsewhere sparked the Arab Spring of 2011, leading to the downfall of long-term dictatorships in Egypt and Tunisia, the march seems like a crucial event once more. It is movement through space, a reclamation of space and a place where people and ideas meet. It allows us to be other than the objects of global capital.
This project uses the metaphor of the march to tell a story about revolution and decolonization in Algeria (1954-2011). These are the moments when it is possible to stage the people (abstract). This a march in, or in support of, "Algeria," whether as a formerly colonized nation seeking independence, or as a metonym for those processes.
It asks: how can we "see" Algeria, its decolonization and revolution? Following the lead of Frantz Fanon, it takes the point of view of the child, meaning both children as such, the colonized "child" of the parent nation, and the "infant" revolution that emerged.
It also demonstrates by showing in the lineage of Benjamin's "show not tell." Most of the book is media for you to watch and draw your own conclusions.
It also demonstrates by showing in the lineage of Benjamin's "show not tell." Most of the book is media for you to watch and draw your own conclusions.
So it is both a story about Algeria as such and a way to understand the interface of decolonization and globalization. Whether or not you work "on" Algeria,there is an "Algeria" in your work, meaning that there is a place where the incomplete or failed processes of decolonization and the formation of independent developing-world nations intersect with the homogenizing tendencies of globalization.
These interfaces are places of conflict and revolution.
They are demonstrations, marches, passages, walks.
In the aftermath of the light of the 2011 revolutionary movement that has swept across the region and indeed the world, this is a project about possible futures as well as recoverable pasts.
“A new international is being sought through these crises”
Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida
These interfaces are places of conflict and revolution.
They are demonstrations, marches, passages, walks.
In the aftermath of the light of the 2011 revolutionary movement that has swept across the region and indeed the world, this is a project about possible futures as well as recoverable pasts.
These pasts and futures are the product of long and entangled interfaces that we are going to walk through, remember, reanimate and (re)claim. The Zapatistas like to say that everything they do is "walking," a journey that has no final destination. This walking is done by means of text and to-camera videos in a broadly conventional way. There is a parallel case being made that this format, allowing as it does for a set of intersecting and interfacing threads to compose the whole, is in fact better suited to reclaiming and exploring these histories.
To anticipate the conclusion, this shift should not surprise us, given the extent to which what we know as "History" was itself formed as a technology of empire. While there is no innocence attached to computing or authoring softwares, there is at least a certain open space in which, for the present, we can walk. To take that walk is to occupy.
To anticipate the conclusion, this shift should not surprise us, given the extent to which what we know as "History" was itself formed as a technology of empire. While there is no innocence attached to computing or authoring softwares, there is at least a certain open space in which, for the present, we can walk. To take that walk is to occupy.
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